Starhill Gallery: Kuala Lumpur Shopping Mall, Malaysia

Starhill Gallery, Malaysia : Kuala Lumpur Shopping Mall

Malaysian Retail Building – design by Spark, architects

18 Jul 2013

Starhill Gallery Shopping Mall

Starhill Gallery Best Retail Project at German Design Council Awards

Spark is delighted to announce that two of its projects; Starhill Gallery in Kuala Lumpur and Fai-Fah in Bangkok have won the 2013 German Design Council awards for “iconic” projects, in the Architecture categories of Best Retail Project and Best Public Project. The awards will be presented at a ceremony to be held in Munich this October.

images : Lin Ho

Spark director Stephen Pimbley commented, “We are very excited to have won these two awards from the German Design Council, I see them as affirmation that Spark’s work is consistently differentiated from that of our competitors and testament to the enthusiasm we bring to our projects that enhances our clients commercial and social objectives perhaps in ways they never thought we possible”

SPARK’s landmark redesign of the 40,000 sqm Starhill Gallery, Kuala Lumpur’s premier shopping mall, has placed the building on the world architecture and retail stage. The highly sculptured glass and stone folded façade, inspired by the tailoring 2 of 3 of Christian Lacroix’s theatre costumes, engages with the public realm giving it powerful new brand image.

A triple height flagship corner pavilion for the luxury French retailer LVMH exemplifies the classic, well-manufactured and timeless quality of the products on sale. The lightweight steel and glass façade’s crystalline form is the first of its kind in Malaysia reinforcing Starhill’s position as the foremost luxury shopping destination in Southeast Asia.

10 Apr 2012

Starhill Gallery Kuala Lumpur

Kuala Lumpur Retail Building

Design: Spark

Location: Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Starhill Gallery is perhaps Kuala Lumpur’s most iconic shopping mall, featuring an extraordinary array of luxury shops and fine dining restaurants. Spark’s design proposal dealt with the reinvention of the existing façade of Starhill Gallery facing Bukit Bintang. This reinvention of Starhill Gallery is designed by Stephen Pimbley, founding director of Spark and the architect behind Singapore’s hugely popular Clarke Quay.

Stephen says, “Unlike many street-facing malls in Kuala Lumpur, our new façade for Starhill Gallery is firmly engaged with the public realm and generates valuable visual connections along this section of Bukit Bintang via the heavy footfall. We have designed a beacon for Starhill Gallery that celebrates its relationship with the city.”

images : Lin Ho

Spark’s design has opened up the façade which provides a lot of visual interest via a continuous shop front that wraps the existing building in a crystalline skin of glass and stone panels. The new façade resembles the “wet drapery” of the ancient statues of Greece and Rome, and the beautifully crafted gowns on sale inside Starhill Gallery. The fractured variation of solidity and transparency transforms the street façade of the existing building entirely, giving it a new contemporary classic identity that stands out amongst the quick-fix, ubiquitous shopping mall façades of many of Starhill Gallery’s neighbours.

Spark’s lightweight steel, stone and glass façade is the first of their kind in Malaysia that embraces cutting-edge façade technology from the French engineer RFR, the team that delivered the Pyramid at the Paris Louvre. Spark replaced the café at the entrance of Starhill Gallery with an iconic triple height shopping pavilion for the French luxury retailer LVMH and their cosmetics brand Sephora. Sephora is, in turn, connected to Starhill via a first floor bridge that pierces the new crystalline façade.

Spark, together with YTL, has deliberately crafted a complex building envelope using only the best materials that resonate with the importance of the building’s position and contribution to the streetscape of Kuala Lumpur. The synergy with high quality of the brands/products, as well as special visitor experience inside Starhill Gallery is undeniable. Starhill Gallery’s new crystalline façade and the Sephora pavilion have effectively established an iconic new identity for Starhill Gallery, affirming its position as the foremost destination for luxury shopping in Southeast Asia.